


Here, Inside This Moment

by ainsley



Category: Life
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-01-02
Updated: 2009-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-02 04:05:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ainsley/pseuds/ainsley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dani, in the minutes immediately following "Trapdoor"; spoilers for all aired episodes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Here, Inside This Moment

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, watersword, for being the John to my Rodney, and for beta-reading under trying circumstances.  
> Title from Mason Jennings, "Be Here Now".

"Crews. Crews."

Dani leaned over Charlie's body, putting pressure on the bullet hole and trying to get him to respond.

Her mind started wandering places it shouldn't have as she fought to return him to consciousness, or at least to keep him alive until the ambulance arrived. She heard Charles Crews, Sr. on the phone a few feet away; she'd radioed in that a cop was down, but he wanted to do something. Calling 911 you can do from a wheelchair; getting down on your hands and knees you can't.

Mr. Crews might not be close to his son, but watching Charlie die in front of him had to be torture--especially since, to Dani's knowledge, the two had not talked about what happened when Charlie shot his dad days earlier.

Suddenly there was a red-headed woman standing over her, blocking the light from the sun streaming though the still-open front door.

"Charlie?" the woman said, looking down at Dani and her hands, covered in blood, blood she couldn't quite keep from leaving Charlie.

"Olivia!" Crews's dad called to the woman, who ran the few feet over to him. Dani heard the two of them talking as she kept applying the pressure, calling "Crews" out every few seconds in the hope that he'd respond.

She'd never had a problem focusing at a crime scene before, at least not when sober (and not very much when drunk), but her mind kept skipping around to memories of Charlie.

Stop, she told her brain. He's not dead, he won't die, and it's the dying person who's supposed to have their life flash before them, not his partner.

_**Crews:** You don't have to understand here to be here._

Dani looked at Charlie. He still wasn't conscious, but his zennish claptrap had made an impression. She didn't understand here, at all, but she needed to be here.

She remembered meeting him for the first time, at that crime scene. He was her punishment for using. They were probation for each other. Working with him felt like punishment, with all the fruit (she still didn't understand what the hell a personal pineapple was supposed to be) and the nonsensical phrases (she heard enough of those in rehab, thank you very much) and the constant good cheer. And the talking. Oh, how that man could talk.

_**Crews:** Every moment you spend wishing you were someplace else is a moment you can't get back._

**Reese:** What about every moment I wish you were someplace else?

Looking back she couldn't quite figure out when the talking had stopped bothering her. Maybe it was when she saw that he was quiet when quiet mattered, like when all she needed was a solid, strong arm to help her walk to the ambulance, her ambulance, when Rick Larson forced her to drink until she'd forced him unconscious. Which she'd only been able to do because Charlie was on the other end of the phone line, silently understanding every word she said, every cue hidden in the answers she gave to Larson.

Maybe his good cheer had worn her down over time. With him around, life didn't seem as bleak.

How was that possible, when his presence wreaked havoc on it? How could she have come to enjoy having him around, when his presence and apparent ties to her father forced her to think back to the months after the Bank of L.A. shootout? She'd started drinking when she was 12 to escape those months.

No wonder she'd fallen off the wagon when Roman mentioned Crews and her father.

Olivia and Mr. Crews kept talking in the background. He kept saying he didn't know what happened. Charlie'd opened the door expecting her, and then there was the shot and Charlie fell, like in slow motion. He didn't know men really fell in slow motion.

Dani felt like these minutes of her life were in slow motion. Funny that, bored and annoyed as she had been by Charlie, time always passed at normal speed with him.

Except lately, when it was never quite enough. Especially that day. What had he been about to tell her about her dad? How did Roman figure into the Seybolt murder?

Wait. Rachel. Seybolt. Rachel Seybolt had been living with Charlie, and he didn't say anything? He'd FOUND Rachel Seybolt? Alive?

_**Crews:** It's like she was no one._

**Reese:** No one is no one.

No one is no one (and NO she didn't sound like him), and nothing is nothing. There was something in Rachel's voice after Charlie had introduced them, something strange in the way she said "Reese?".

Did Rachel know her dad? She'd reacted a little when hearing Dani's name. What the hell had her dad been doing? Had he framed Crews for murder? WHY would her dad have done that?

Dani thought she knew most of the skeletons in Crews's closet. He didn't keep them secret. Now she wondered if he knew more than she did about the skeletons in her own closet.

_**Crews:** Anger ruins joy. Steals the goodness of my mind. Forces my mouth to say terrible things. Overcoming anger brings peace of mind. Leads to a mind without regrets. If I overcome anger, I will be delightful and loved by everyone._

Crews had spent 12 years in prison--a COP in prison--for a triple homicide he didn't commit. The Seybolts had been his friends. He'd overcome that anger. (How, Dani didn't think she'd ever stop wondering.)

Would being shot steal the goodness from his mind? What would it take to push him over the edge? He'd seen her at the edge, and helped her balance and walk back to safety. Could she do that for him? Would he let her?

What the fuck was taking the ambulance so long?

And what the hell was going on? Dani itched to see what the shooter had left behind, what evidence there was on Charlie's front stoop, but she didn't think she could leave him even though Olivia seemed perfectly capable of putting pressure on a gunshot wound.

It was Charlie's wound, though, and that seemed to mean that Dani wasn't going anywhere.


End file.
